


Home

by electropeach



Category: Liveship Traders Trilogy - Robin Hobb, Realm of the Elderlings - Robin Hobb
Genre: Campfires, First Meetings, Gen, Shippy Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:00:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24270223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/electropeach/pseuds/electropeach
Summary: But here was a tall, slender woman standing beside her, two mugs of tea steaming in her hands, and smiling down at her.Jek meeting Amber for the first time.For Rote Ladies Big Bang 2020 on Tumblr, prompt 15: A long way from Buck.
Relationships: Amber & Jek
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15
Collections: Rote Ladies Big Bang 2020





	Home

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Rote Ladies Big Bang 2020 event on Tumblr, for prompt 15, "A long way from Buck". Takes place between the Farseer trilogy and the Liveship Traders trilogy, with Jek meeting an Amber fresh out of a fool's motley.

Warmer lands, she had thought, wading her way through wet mud and rain water and the remains of her erstwhile brothers-and-sisters-in-arms. The squabbles between the Six Duchies and Chalced paid well, but she was weary of the wet, and the cold, and it didn't help that everyone she drank with or joked with had a nasty habit to die within a few days. Damn this, she had thought, there had to be warmer places to earn her keep by her sword.

Four months later found Jek crisscrossing the roads and seas of Jamaillia, thoroughly disillusioned. Warmer lands they might have been, but when she escorted caravans and nobles across the land, there were swamps and marshes, biting insects, and the rains lasted for days. By sea, she was chilled to the bone as often as not, and when bad weather was on them, even the hired swords were expected to help managing the ships. She could scramble well enough, and had a basic understanding of how ships worked, having warriored on one of the ships defending the coastline from Red Ship Raiders, but she was not a sailor.

On the bright side, she mused to herself one evening as she sat cradling a cup of rich mushrooms soup by the campfire, waiting for her guard duty to begin, her traveling companions were less likely to die within a few days of her meeting them. That was a pleasant change of pace.

"Missing home?" a melodic voice inquired.

Jek looked up in surprise. She was currently employed by a caravan of merchants and traveling artisans, large enough that most groups made their own campfires for the night rather than one large communal one. She was sitting at the fire she shared with the other mercenaries hired to guard the caravan, and had expected to be left alone. The mercenaries were generally considered a rowdy bunch - with good reason, as the other three not currently on guard were even now wheedling a company of young merchants to gamble and drink with them - and their customers often seemed to think it distasteful to consort with them beyond the necessities of agreeing upon a price and seeing that they did their job.

But here was a tall, slender woman standing beside her, two mugs of tea steaming in her hands, and smiling down at her. Jek had noticed her before - she was one of the company of actors that traveled with the artisans, and she stood out in her group like a gold ring glinting among pebbles and rocks. Amid the colorful Jamaillians and Durjans that made up most of their entourage, dark and blonde and red-haired and dressed in every color imaginable, the willowy woman was a spot of early spring sunlight, pale and light but golden. Her hair, loosely braided, was the color of wheat ready for harvest. Her yellow skirts were longer than was fashionable in these parts, almost to the ground, and she wore a soft woven shawl draped loosely over her white blouse.

The woman's smile was already fading, and Jek realized that she had taken too long to answer, and much too long to eye her from head to toe. No wonder she was thought as rude as her fellow mercenaries.

"Not really," she replied quickly, after desperately trying to remember what the other woman had asked. "Just deep in thought, I guess. I apologize. Here, did you want to sit down for a moment?" She scooted over on the log she had claimed, patting the place next to her and flashing a hopefully disarming grin up at the woman.

The woman's mouth made a movement that was half a suppressed smile and half a relieved sigh, and she nodded, accepting Jek's offer by gracefully seating herself on the log, steaming mugs carefully balanced in her hands. Wordlessly, she offered the other mug to Jek, who hastily gulped down the rest of her soup - it had gone cold, how long had she been staring into the fire? - and set the bowl on the ground to accept the tea with muttered thanks. 

The other woman smiled and immediately covered it with her own mug. Her sunlight-colored hands cradled the intricately carved wooden mug like the finest crystal. Jek fervently and belatedly wished that she hadn't just slurped her remaining soup like a barbarian, and sipped her tea to cover her bafflement. It was lovely, with nettle and mint, and it reminded Jek of home.

"I've seen you act," Jek heard herself say abruptly. "You're very good."

It was true. The company of actors was on its way to perform in Jamaillia City, and had practiced their play often enough during evenings that Jek had had ample opportunity to watch them. The woman played two roles: she was both the heroine of the story, a young lady of noble birth, and the hero's cousin, a reckless young man prone to knavery and foolhardiness. She played the noblewoman's role beautifully, fragile like glass and all fluttering eyelashes and swooning spells, and the young man's role with her voice pitched low, a convincing swagger, and a jaunty toss of her head to demonstrate the character's boyish contempt for authorities.

The woman seemed genuinely pleased, a faint flush on her cheeks transforming her sculpted face. "Thank you," she said. Then, almost shyly, "I'm called Amber." Jek's heart leaped; there was a faint Buck accent to her words. She was too fair to appear Buck-born, and the way she stressed and stretched her vowels wasn't quite native Buck either, but she had evidently lived there for many years.

"Jek. Pleased to meet you." The sun lady had neglected to mention her last name, so Jek felt she could omit her own without the usual _Jek who._ Amber nodded gravely, as though finding out her name had been of the utmost importance, and Jek cast around in her mind for a topic of conversation that might better serve to demonstrate her verbal and auditive skills than her previous blunders. "What did you mean, missing home?"

"Oh," Amber said, as though slightly abashed, "you seemed lonely, and I thought... You're from the Six Duchies, aren't you? I suppose I thought you were thinking of your home, sitting here staring into the fire for so long."

What she meant, Jek suddenly realized with absolute clarity, was that it was Amber herself who had been thinking of her adopted home, and had gravitated toward her, the caravan's only other link to the Six Duchies, hoping to ease her longing by sharing it. That unlike Jek, she had left not looking for adventure and more comfortable ways to earn coin, but out of necessity. That unlike Jek, she had left people she loved behind.

So she thought nothing of saying, "Well, I guess I was," and launching into a long, winding series of tales of her travels around her home country. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but the way Amber's small smile widened encouragingly, lighting up her face, the way her yellow eyes sparkled, and the way she caught her breath or laughed at just the right moment somehow made it seem true.

And when Amber spoke quietly of the Six Duchies, particularly Buck, of the cobbled streets of Buckkeep and of the rushing sea making her hair curl with sprays of salt water when she walked along the chilly rocks by the sea, of the lovingly tended flowerbeds in the keep's gardens, of the way the setting sun seemed to set the entire town aflame, it suddenly _was_ true. Amber's words painted Jek's home, the cold and dreary coastal Duchies, in unexpectedly vibrant colors, in flame and sunlight and stormy gray, draped it in fluttering butterfly wings and fragrant flowers, in everyday strengths and kindnesses of everyday people. She mentioned no specific people, but her love for them shone through brightly enough that Jek could almost see them outlined against the blaze of Amber's joy and pride in them. Transfixed, her home-scented tea long forgotten, Jek watched her spin her tale, her hands moving through the air in graceful sweeps as she gestured animatedly.

It was much later, and Amber had made them more tea that she drank in dainty sips and Jek forgot as she listened, before one of Jek's fellow mercenaries came to inform her, rather nastily, that her shift had started ages ago and that if it wasn't altogether _too much_ trouble, he would like to be relieved. Jek sent him away with a few sound curses that she immediately regretted when she remembered that she was in the presence of a beautiful, intelligent lady. She glanced at Amber just in time to see her hiding a smirk behind the tea mug.

Unusually flustered, Jek rose to her feet, dusting herself off and looking down at Amber. "I apologize," she heard herself say awkwardly. "I'm afraid I must..." She trailed off. She found she didn't want to go.

But Amber smiled and shook her head as she gathered the wooden cups and flowed to her feet with catlike ease. "No, I apologize. I shouldn't have kept you so long." She eyed Jek from the corner of her eye, a small smile curling her lips. She seemed almost shy. "Thank you. For listening, and for sharing."

"Anytime," Jek replied, and stood rooted to the spot watching Amber walk away. It was like watching the sun retreat behind clouds.

She thought that perhaps tomorrow, when they made camp, it might be Jek's turn to miss home and turn up at Amber's fire.


End file.
